Fen, Bog and Swamp: from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize

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Poetic, wide-ranging, and a display of erudition seldom offered. Whatever opinion or attitude the reader brings to this presentation, it is worth reading for its word art alone!” —David Sutton, San Francisco Book Review I'm still not at all sure just how I would classify the book, which is divided into three sections, the first being fens, the second bogs, and the third swamps. (Since these three types of what Proulx terms “peatlands” comprise the title of the book, this division is not at all surprising.) Each section includes a bit of scientific information intended to help the reader distinguish just what comprises a fen or a bog or a swamp and how each differs from the other two. Dabs of history relative to the topic of each section are mentioned as well as the author's own experiences with each of these types of wetlands.

Her research, no matter what the COVID-19 pandemic hampered, is clearly thorough. And she cannot possibly be faulted here. The inclusion of the newly fascinating Doggerland seems to have held her attention a smidge too long, but she so obviously scoured all potentially relevant research that she regretted leaving anything out, lest she be unable to convince. I was quite charmed by the book. Proulx delves into so many aspects of wetlands. She describes humans who once lived in harmony with the land, before land was privatized and turned into ‘productive’ farmland to increase the owner’s wealth. The English fens once covered 15,500 square miles and now less than 1 percent remains. The abundant life of the fens also disappeared. My mind was set alight reading about the lost Doggerland which connected Britain and Europe, suddenly flooded by seawater from glacial melt at the end of the Ice Age. I dreamed of those people that night. “I wonder if, as the waters rose, metamorphosing proto-England from the doorstep of a vast continent to a small island, some landscape memory of hugeness underlay the country’s later drive for empire,” Proulx muses. This little book is dedicated to the people of Ecuador who made their land the first country in the world to include legal rights for natural ecosystems in its constitution. The recent ruling against mining companies to protect the Andean cloud forest Los Cedros is a significant event for the world. Why fens, bogs and swamps?But take away from any read the best, accept that not all of it was made with your taste in mind, and Author Proulx's essential message shines a harsh lime-light onto the instrumentalist Judeo-Christian worldview that's landed us in this awful mess: From all the wetland revivals, a new questioning attitude toward natural catastrophes seems to be emerging that asks: in the long run, can flooding be looked at as nature’s restoration of habitats and environments? To date, we have only looked at what damage is done to human activities and uses, but flooding does more than destroy houses and roads. We need to learn how the greater wild system works and cooperate with it as much as we can. How much did the 2020 pandemic “anthropause,” when the world and oceans were quieter with less human bustle, affect the natural world? A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. In Fen, Bog & Swamp, Annie Proulx shows us how to fall in love with wetlands . . . [The book] pays the kind of artistic and emotional attention to swamps that is usually reserved for sunsets and canyons.” —Kiley Bense, Inside Climate News

ESQ: When discussing the draining of wetlands, you make several tongue-in-cheek references to the resulting “most productive soil in the world.” I think you’d agree that our society tends to have a rather toxic concept of “productive.” Where do you think this mania for productivity comes from? That is, to know what the difference is between fen, bog and swamp. To be able to go into a wetland and look around at it and say, "Aha, I know this is a swamp, it's full of trees. Or, this is a bog, full of quaking sphagnum moss." It's more didactic than a call to arms. That's just not my thing. As a nonscientist, Proulx explains in accessible language how fens, bogs and swamps differ by water level and vegetation, and how crucial each of these ecosystems is to a balanced environment. The very short version is that they store carbon dioxide and methane, so when peatlands are disrupted, those gases are released and contribute to the climate change crisis, which is itself one of the things causing those disruptions. Peatlands are also home to a staggering number of plant and animal species integral to a healthy ecological community. A recent TV ad features three guys lost in the woods, debating whether they should’ve taken a turn at a pond, which one guy argues is a marsh. “Let’s not pretend you know what a marsh is,” the other snaps. “Could be a bog,” offers the third.From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx—whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth—comes a riveting, revelatory history of our wetlands, their ecological role, and what their systematic destruction means for the planet. My four possible conclusions for why this book is a hot mess are as follows ranked from most generous to least generous:

and after presenting basic arithmetic about microorganisms that resulted in a number with lots of zeros at the end, “If you are an earth-moving machine operator planning to drain bog land, think on this [number] and resist.”

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She does go off in some interesting tangents which I was happy to read about. I also was glad to be informed about the impacts of draining the wetlands and restoration projects. Rewetting is encouraging to see up close, but it’s harder to celebrate when net zero effectively means not zero – that it’s part of the economic infrastructure of emissions as usual – and when offsetting is leading to a new investment frenzy. An analyst for the property consultants Bidwells noted that these developments have ‘led to increased demand for land with the potential for natural capital enhancement … as some rural estates change hands for multiples of what their sale price was only two years ago’. Because the same forces of capital that incentivise peatland restoration are those that made it necessary in the first place, it all feels a bit like Slavoj Žižek’s example of the chocolate laxative: the solution to the problem lies in a more rigorous application of its original cause.

Proulx wants us to see the loss of wetlands – and to appreciate the beauty in these swampy and often stinking places. Boy, does she succeed. The prose is just magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats" Solving THAT conundrum is another book entirely, but perhaps an octogenarian's frustrated nostalgia will make a difference after all. But when in the time of Al Gore many people began to notice and talk about disappeared forests, lake and river pollution, ripping away the mountain tops to get at the coal inside, building polluting factories on the banks of some of the country’s most scenic rivers, the outrageous idea of environmental protection emerged. The ideas had been around for some years, mostly praised by “nature lover” nuts. Almost immediately, caring for and restoring damaged parts of the natural world was seen by business-minded Republicans as a dangerous folly that would destroy jobs and hurt the chances of individuals and companies to make money. There was the strange belief that nature could always repair itself infinitely, no matter what was done to it. Rather swiftly, the Republican Right mixed the idea of the perceived environmental threat to business into its politics. This brew was served as a carelessly poured bottle of red wine at a white-tablecloth dinner. Everything got stained. And “democracy” began to be shown up as a kind of weak lemonade. A lifelong environmentalist, Annie Proulx brings her wide-ranging research and scholarship to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important yet little understood role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four stunning parts, Proulx documents the long-misunderstood role of these wetlands in saving the planet.From Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx – whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth – comes a riveting, revelatory history of our wetlands, their ecological role, and what their systematic destruction means for the planet. Humans have been digging and drying peat and then burning it up for fuel or draining the areas for farmland and houses, or trying to plant directly into some slightly less wet wetland areas, and we have been doing it seemingly forever. We have disturbed and destroyed so much that we have changed whole ecosystems and weather patterns.